Retaining talent is a challenge for Lisa Martin, senior vice president of worldwide procurement, at Pfizer in New York. But, as she sees it, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

One reason it's tough for her to hold on to skilled purchasing professionals is that they are often recruited by other functions within the global pharmaceutical company wowed by their abilities. The purchasing pros serve on cross-functional teams created to procure many of the indirect services bought by Pfizer's businesses.

One procurement team at Pfizer whose results particularly make Martin proud: Legal. Procurement led a cross-unctional team to source the company's litigation services. Four years ago, Pfizer had been working with more than 400 law firms. The team, using a strategic sourcing process, selected one firm to act as general contractor to coordinate the company's business with the law firms.

"The team shrunk the supply base considerably," Martin says, "and, consequently, the company is not only seeing improved quality, but also better relationships with suppliers." The team had a champion: Jeff Kinder, who was then the company's general counsel before becoming its CEO in July 2006. Procurement has since been asked to get involved in the company's intellectual property and employment law purchases.

Of the company's marketing and advertising buy, which procurement has successfully sourced in Europe, she says, "We are like a glue. We learned more about marketing than some of the regions. We became valuable to the leaders of the pharmaceutical operations."

In the midst of a transformation of worldwide procurement (the company grew significantly by two major mergers in the past 10 years), Martin is responsible for $15.5 billion in annual spend, and has a savings target of $2 billion. About 680 purchasing professionals, or colleagues as Pfizer calls them, work in procurement.

The transformation consists of procurement collaborating more across regions and functions, challenging the status quo in the way the company works with suppliers and learning how to do more and achieve more.

Martin: “We became valuable to the leaders of the pharmaceutical operations.”